Folge 5: Love Without Distance: Tristan, Solaris, and the Violence of Fulfilled Desire
Matthew Shadbolt explores the striking parallels between Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde and Tarkovsky’s Solaris, arguing that both works depict love as a destructive force when it achieves total fulfillment. He suggests that these stories are not about the triumph of affection over death, but rather the catastrophic collapse of the boundaries and distances that make human relationships possible. In both the opera and the film, the removal of limits turns desire into an annihilating force that consumes the world and the individual alike. Shadbolt posits that love requires finitude, history, and absence to maintain its ethical dimension and meaning.
Ultimately, the text serves as a warning that a love which refuses all boundaries ceases to be humane, becoming instead a lethal state of total immersion. This analysis highlights how both creators use their respective mediums to show that distance is the essential precondition for true intimacy.
